Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Two years ago, when we opened our first photos of the toddlers we were considering adopting, we saw a grinning blond boy with merry eyes and an auburn-haired girl who looked like she was trying not to smile. We noticed that both had smooth skin, clear eyes, and chubby hands. We noticed that the girl K, age three, had her arm protectively around her brother M, age two. And, to our great relief, we noticed toys. On the couch, beside the children, were a toy drum and a large board book. We thought, “These kids have had experience with toys. Unless they’ve got innate cognitive problems, they know how to use their senses, hands, and imagination, and they might even know how to share.”

Some institutionally-raised kids, lacking adequate sensory and social stimulation, fail to meet developmental milestones. When we met K and M, however, we found them as alert, tactile, imaginative, and sociable as all the other children we’d ever met who hadn’t grown up in an orphanage; medical records indicated they were right on schedule. We saw toys in their apartment. Not many, and they had to be shared with six other children, but they were there.

In the early months after we adopted, we found K and M unusually athletic. K could already pump a swing; M could do headstands. Both could outlast even bigger kids in the playground. However, neither kid could play with a toy for more than a couple hours without breaking it. They would jump on balloons, tear books, and dismantle anything with moving parts. My globe-trotting cousin sent hand-me-downs which had survived her three kids and countless baggage handlers; the last toy finally broke eight weeks after we received it. My husband and I observed no anger in the destruction, just curiosity paired with ignorance of how much a toy could take. It was as if our kids hadn’t had enough experience with toys to understand.

We didn’t know what to do, but we felt we had to do something. We didn’t want our kids to break things in school or at other people’s homes. We don’t believe in accumulating too much “stuff,” so we had a number of arguments and did a lot of reading. Eventually, we bought a healthy number of hardy used toys and made it clear to the kids that we wouldn’t replace them if they broke.

I don’t know whether to attribute success to our actions or to the kids’ natural growth, but I’m relieved to say that now, after 20 months home, my daughter and son seem to know what is an appropriate amount of force to use on a toy. They own enough toys to fill a playroom, but no more, and they treat them with respect by putting them away, as well they should: every surviving toy has paid its dues. We like to think our kids have learned about both physics and responsibility.

Imagine my grief when I go to other kids’ houses and see rooms so full of toys that the kids who own them can’t pick out even one to play with. If they can, then they can’t share it, and they never know where to put it away. I can’t help thinking that our kids’ orphan days actually set them up well for functioning in a materialistic society. 

by Deborah L. Blicher

Photo graciously provided by Ben McLeod, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.